Children’s Community Support Collaborative

The Children’s Community Collaborative (the “Collaborative”) organizes and manages a treatment continuum for youth with significant emotional and mental health needs and their families. The Collaborative, a program funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the Department of Children and Families, provides community-based wrap-around services designed to keep youth at home with their primary caregiver. But also has a long and short-term out-of-home treatment component.

Each family is assigned a core team which provides in-home family treatment, parent and youth support, care coordination, 24-hour crisis support, and linkage with both formal and informal community resources. The core team is made up of:

• Master’s Level Clinician 
• Community Outreach Worker 
• Consulting Psychiatrist and Occupational Therapist 
• Peer Mentor

The focus of treatment is to strengthen youth and family skills and to address obstacles to successful function of the youth in the community with their family. Our teams work to position themselves as allies for youth and families and do so through fostering enhanced self-control and determination.

Do you think the Collaborative could be a good fit for your child?

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Collaborative Referrals

The Collaborative serves youth (6-18) who have been assessed to be in need of, or at risk for, out-of-home placement due to safety concerns related to mental illness, severe emotional and/or behavioral disturbance and:

• Are working toward living in a community-based home setting (family, foster home, independent living) 
• Are likely to need 24/7 access to community-based crisis support 
• Are able to attend school in the community

Our goal for all children involved with the Collaborative is to safely get them home. A child being referred to the program should have a viable adult resource (family, kin, pre-adoptive foster family, etc) who is able to participate in intensive in-home community based services. They must be allowed to have unsupervised contact with the youth.